


radio silence

by soldierly



Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierly/pseuds/soldierly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four days, three hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds from their destination, they run out of oxygen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	radio silence

Four days, three hours, sixteen minutes and twenty-two seconds from their destination, they run out of oxygen.

It's a shame, really, because they're the _rescue_ , they're the search party, the cavalry, the cowboys gone to shoot up the aliens, and the billion other awful gun-slinging metaphors for their little band of brave soldiers Bucky came up with.

It was so easy then, when it was the six of them, fresh and new and _excited_ , on their first mission – even Steve, small and asthmatic and fragile, bolstered by the recent developments in medications. Even Steve got clearance, and they were all so _excited_ , because space was _exciting_ , despite all the training videos and the warnings and the gory evidence of what happened when someone's tie got loose or an airlock snapped open. God, they were going to go _out there_ , they were going to find the missing ship and the missing crew and they were going to be big fucking heroes.

They were all so goddamn excited, Bucky thinks, and Steve is shaking in his lap, already overcome and unconscious, sweat beaded on his flushed skin. He used to be so pale as a kid; Bucky remembers that even endless days in the sun wouldn't darken his skin, would just burn and blister it while Bucky romped around, skinned knees and ray-darkened and touting enough busty attitude for the both of them. Steve had always been the quiet one.

What he'd give to hear Steve talk now.

He's in the early stages of it himself: a muscle in his shoulder twitches, and no matter how much he rubs at it, it won't stop; he's flushing, too, and his skin is starting to itch, especially where the heat of Steve's over-warm body is resting on his, but Bucky won't push him away, can't abandon him now.

" _There's not enough_ ," and that was Harker, his voice low and unsettled and haunted. " _We're running out of oxygen, those damn morons sent us out here without enough oxygen_."

How is that even fucking possible, Bucky wants to know. Was this the point? Six of the youngest, the brightest, the _future of America's space program, indeed, of mankind itself – the few, the brave, the Space Corps!_ That had been _his ad_ , they all talked about why they'd signed on. He and Steve had been sitting in the back of his dad's Chevelle, back before his parents went and died, and it had come on the radio, calling for him. Steve had been the only one who hadn't laughed when Bucky had pointed up and said, "I'm gonna join, I'm going."

Steve said, "I'll go with you."

Steve. God, Steve. Bucky rubs his aching shoulder against the sleek, curved steel wall of the craft's hallway, drops his newly-free hand to Steve's face. To his cheek, to touch the bruising developing under his eyes. Carbon dioxide poisoning is ugly to watch.

Steve is the best of them all. He's not following Bucky; he never was. He thought he was, but Bucky would always find himself trailing after that dumb-as-shit kid, because Steve never fucking gives up, , _never has_. Bucky can feel him breathing even now, long after he should be dead.

"Can't give up, pal," Bucky says into the thin air. He's breathing _it_ in, and every time he forces his pained lungs to expand, his head aches a little more, his vision swims, the exhaustion creeps up. "Can't give up, Steve-o, remember what I told you? That fuckin' poem, I know I put it on me somewhere," but when he lifts his hand to search his pockets, his fingers are shaking so badly he can't bend them. "Can't get it, fuck, can't remember. Somethin' about the light, right? This is – " His heart thuds heavy, then nothing, then heavy again before evening out, choking him with the thick taste of blood. "This is," he says, and stops. He's a soldier, an engineer – a soldier-turned-engineer; he couldn't ace all the program entrance tests like Steve did, he had to fight his way up. He's a soldier, and he shouldn't be sitting here _dying_. What happened to going out for a cause?

Steve shudders, convulsing, his back arching unnaturally, and Bucky doesn't have the strength to hold him down. It goes on for a long, painful minute, one violent shiver after another, the awkward bind and twist of Steve's muscles, before he falls still, takes a staccato breath in, and in, and in, and then nothing. _Nothing_.

"Steve, hey." Bucky's vision closes around Steve, darkening. Panic grips him, but he shoves it aside, fumbles out his dog tags and pulls desperately until they detach with a worn whine of metal. "Steve, fuckin' – come on." He thuds his hand down on Steve's chest, leaves the dog tags there. Steve always said if Bucky was deployed he wanted them, Bucky could just tell someone he lost his, he'd get new ones, _C'mon, Buck, I'd want something of you_. This is everything, all Bucky has left now, and he'll give it to Steve if Steve will just _wake up_.

He slides down when he can't sit anymore, stares up at the blank steel above him. Everyone else is already dead. He can feel it, deep in his gut, the way he knows when a computer is malfunctioning, days before it starts kicking up a fuss. "Hey, Steve." It's a hollow, dry murmur now. Consciousness fades in and out, and he means to say something else, something important, vitally (maybe) so, but Steve isn't breathing, definitely isn't, Bucky can tell from right next to him, and is anything actually important when Steve's gone?

There's a faint tug from somewhere in him, something either deeply spiritual (Bucky's never been religious) or entirely biological: the futile snapping of his heart.

Either way, he passes from lucid to unconscious in that second, and then it's all a fluid crush in time, his death as real as the years of memories: ice cream in Central Park, careful young smiles, the tentative push of Steve's hand in his, first cigarettes and boozy dances. The laughing, the lightness.

Them, together.


End file.
